Have young mothers been pressured into having abortions?
As serious concerns are raised about a chain of clinics . . .
DEEP down, Sophie knew she’d made a terrible mistake the moment she swallowed one of two abortion pills to end her six-week pregnancy.
Not long turned 29, in a fledgling relationship and her career in marketing just getting off the ground, it wasn’t the best time to start a family.
But still, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was being pressured into taking a drastic step that she would later live to regret.
Not just by her boyfriend and parents, who had been encouraging her to opt for an abortion, but, more pertinently, by the Marie Stopes clinic dolling out the drugs to bring her first pregnancy to an end.
Sophie was due to take the second pill to complete the termination the following morning, but she didn’t sleep that night as doubts crowded her mind.
After many hours scouring the internet for clues as to whether the pill she’d already taken could damage her baby, Sophie was resolute: she wanted her unborn child to live.
But when she returned to the Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, West London, and confided in a nurse as her family sat in the clinic’s waiting room, she was met with a steely response.
‘I explained that I felt trapped and pressured,’ she says. ‘I told the nurse I didn’t want to take the second tablet. But she told me I was being a “silly girl”; that as I had already taken one, my baby would be deformed.’
Although no one actually knows if this is the case, it was a horrifying thought. But not enough to dissuade Sophie. She excused herself from the room, saying she needed the bathroom — and fled.
Outside, she was met by a group of anti-abortion protesters who keep vigil outside such clinics. They took her in a taxi to a Harley Street doctor, who gave her some of the pregnancy hormone progesterone to help counteract the abortion pill. She was helped financially by this group until some months later, when her family finally accepted her decision.
Two years on, Sophie, who lives in Margate, Kent, has a successful career in marketing and dotes on her beautiful — and so far healthy — little girl, Samantha. Although she has since separated from the father, she has reconciled with her parents, who adore their grandchild.
SLOWLY, painfully, Sophie has tried to put her negative experience behind her. But she certainly isn’t the only young, intelligent, independent woman who says she felt pressured into termination.
As Sophie explains: ‘I’m an only child. My parents had big plans for me. I wasn’t married. My career was just starting out. My then boyfriend didn’t want the baby. I felt pushed into doing something I didn’t want to do. But I’ve completely forgiven them and they love Samantha deeply.’
Perhaps the most concerning element is Sophie’s assertion she ‘wasn’t listened to at the clinic’, the suggestion being that they were hastening her to go ahead regardless.
‘I told them I didn’t want to have the abortion,’ says Sophie. ‘I should have been supported.’
It’s a serious accusation, and Marie Stopes — which carries out about a third of the terminations in Britain — insists it takes a woman’s choice very seriously throughout every stage of an abortion.
A spokesman said: ‘Choice is at the heart of everything we do, and that includes giving women information on all their pregnancy options.
‘We ask women at every stage if they are sure they want to proceed, including in the procedure room. If a woman says no, or if we feel she isn’t sure of her decision, we won’t proceed. Instead, we’ll recommend she takes some more time over her decision and speaks to an independent counsellor if she’d like to.
‘Most women who walk through our doors are absolutely clear they want an abortion. But around one in ten women doesn’t proceed, either because she’s changed her mind or we’re not confident that she is sure of her choice.’
But in August, the health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), took the unusual step of halting the 250 abortions carried out each week nationwide at Marie Stopes clinics as a result of ‘specific immediate concerns’ regarding consent, safeguarding, training and the competence of staff.
The charity, which provides 70,000 abortions each year — almost 90 per cent of which are paid for by the NHS — wasn’t allowed to carry out terminations on women under 18 or those classed as vulnerable or requiring anaesthetic (this effectively meant any procedures carried out after 12 weeks).
The CQC did not provide full details as to why it had demanded the suspension, but said it was concerned that the right protocols may not be in place to ensure that girls under the age of 18 were able to give informed consent to a termination.
Inspectors were also concerned about the standards of anaesthesia in clinics when women were undergoing surgical abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy — a small minority of the total terminations. The CQC said there was a ‘lack of assurance
in relation to training and competence in conscious sedation and general anaesthesia’.
The watchdog said it had become concerned during routine inspections of clinics, and as a result carried out an unannounced inspection of Marie Stopes International’s corporate HQ before ordering the suspension.
At the time, Marie Stopes expressed surprise at the timing of the suspension, but said it was working with the CQC to resolve issues.
In Britain, one in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Yet the subject is still rarely discussed, particularly by women who regret them.
Since Dr Marie Stopes launched her first family planning clinic in 1921, the charity has changed beyond all recognition.
Ironically, Stopes herself was strongly opposed to abortion, insisting that proper birth control was the answer to unwanted pregnancies.
And yet, Marie Stopes UK has been providing what it describes as ‘specialist abortion care’ on behalf of the NHS for the past 40 years, offering ‘lunchtime’ medical abortions (taking pills as opposed to surgery) following the advent of mifepristone — a drug which blocks the action of progesterone — in the Nineties. It is then followed up by a second pill, which causes the womb to contract and expel the foetus. Abortion costs listed on its website run from £82 for a consultation to £2,040 for a late surgical abortion at 19 to 24 weeks which involves removing the foetus, normally with forceps, under anaesthetic. All of these are carried out by Marie Stopes, which has an annual turnover of £250 million. Like Sophie, Shannon Skinner, 21, had a medical abortion in 2014 at Marie Stopes by taking two pills. Her story made headlines when her baby miraculously survived. Although doctors say any potentially damaging side-effects of the medication are difficult to properly assess developmentally until Amelia — now two — is around four, she is a happy, bonny toddler. Of her decision to have a termination, Shannon says: ‘I was told by my GP it was the best option because I suffered severe injuries during a difficult labour with my first baby, Lacie, who was only four months old when I found out I was pregnant again.’
It’s the Marie Stopes clinic she feels really let her down.
‘My experience at the clinic was pretty horrible,’ says Shannon. ‘I didn’t want an abortion really.’
When she told them it was her doctor who had advised the termination, the clinic didn’t question it.
‘I was eight weeks pregnant when I went there. I took the two tablets and went home. There was no follow-up call or appointment.
‘It’s not an experience I would ever want to go through again. [The clinic] felt like a conveyor belt. There were lots of crying women. I regretted it instantly.
‘I only found out I was still pregnant when I later felt kicking, at which point I was 20 weeks pregnant.’
NOW separated from Lacie and Amelia’s father, Shannon says staff at the clinic in Bristol did say there was a ‘very small chance’ the medication might not work.
She adds: ‘I’m glad it didn’t. I call her our miracle baby because we just don’t know how she survived. She must have really wanted to be here.’
Another woman who is still struggling to cope with what happened to her at a Marie Stopes clinic is Caroline Farrow. Now 42, she became pregnant following an assault when she was a 22-year-old air hostess. ‘Looking back, I was panicked,’ she says. ‘I didn’t feel there was a way to keep the baby. Nobody at the clinic gave me any advice that I, like most women, could be a good mum. I just needed some reassurance and support. Adoption, for example, wasn’t mentioned once.’
Caroline, who lives in Ash, Surrey, now has five children with her husband Robin, a 42-year-old priest. Describing her experience at the clinic, she adds: ‘I was scanned by a monosyllabic sonographer who just grunted at me. I was eight weeks pregnant and scared.
‘I was given the first set of pills and told to come back next day. I wasn’t warned what would happen. I suffered agonising cramps, yet the only pain relief was paracetamol. I was throwing up violently and felt feverish. I remember pressing my head on the cold bathroom floor tiles.’
Worse was to come. ‘I was told I would eventually pass the embryo sack. No one had prepared me that I would see a fully formed foetus. It haunts me to this day. A nurse put it in a brown paper bag like it was nothing. I’m not sure I would have gone through with it if I’d known what was going to happen.’
Following the recent controversy surrounding the clinics, there have been calls for its chief executive Simon Cook, who last year received a salary of £420,755, to resign.
This week, services at Marie Stopes are slowly starting to resume, with the aim to have business as usual by the end of the month.
The spokesman said the organisation was addressing the CQC’s concerns: ‘We will make sure that we learn from this and never again fall below the standards women have every right to expect from us.’
Meanwhile, mums such as Sophie and Shannon, whose babies miraculously survived, breathe a sigh of relief. As for other vulnerable young women contemplating this most distressing decision, time will only tell if they will live to regret their actions.